Cape Town | Tuesday
SOUTH Africa published a draft manufacturing strategy on Tuesday to boost its share of global trade and identified eight industrial sectors for a special focus on efficiency and international competitiveness.
The programme is part of the government’s drive to break out of flat economic growth and generate the income necessary to eliminate apartheid era backlogs that keep most of the black majority trapped in poverty.
Trade and Industry Minister Alec Erwin told legislators in Cape Town he hoped the strategy, which should be approved by the cabinet within two months, would reverse the decline in South Africa’s share of global trade.
He said that despite a significant growth in manufactured exports in the eight years since the transition from white rule to democracy, the country’s share of global trade had fallen from 1,2% to 0,5%.
”We are very confident that over the next five to 10 years, South Africa can become one of the major manufacturing countries of the world,” he told a parliamentary committee.
AUTO INDUSTRY SETS TONE
Erwin said an analysis of the recovery of the automotive industry since 1994, which accounted for five percent of gross domestic product, and of the decline in the clothing and footwear industries had highlighted areas for state intervention.
The department’s role would include measures to promote competitiveness, provide customised services to encourage key export sectors and ensure efficient generic services such as transport, communications and port processing.
”Our challenge lies in the manufacturing sector. We seek to become a net exporter of manufactured goods,” Erwin said.
He identified eight sectors with high potential and said the government would focus on their development.
They were clothing and textiles, agro-processing, metals and minerals, tourism, automotive and transport, crafts, chemical and biotechnology and knowledge-intensive services.
”In respect of all these programmes, the department of trade and industry does not envision that government will provide massive injections of money to sectors or enterprises,” he said.
Instead, the government mainly would facilitate human resource development, technology, infrastructure and logistics. ”We have to have efficiency, efficiency of movement, efficiency of telecommunications or we will fall behind,” he said. – Reuters